Ontario Set To Terminate Needed Therapy for a Vast Swath of Autistic Kids

(Parents Upset At Recent Changes To Autism Services In Ontario)

The Ontario government recently announced changes it is going to make to the services autistic kids receive in the province. The Ontario government is looking at terminating intensive behavioral intervention therapy (IBI) for kids 5 and over, and pump more money into the controversial applied behavior analysis (ABA) program in its place. Those currently on the wait list for IBI will receive a total of $8,000 to cover a few months of IBI therapy as compensation.

IBI therapy is one on one therapy with specialists for the kids, meanwhile ABA sets to train the parents to become their child’s specialist and the parent is then responsible for applied therapy. The Ontario Government is committing $333 million to transition IBI to ABA. This transition could end up having a profound impact on parents who are working full-time on top of many other stresses they have to deal with. This change in policy puts applied therapy directly on the parents’ backs, which could create another crisis as a result of the time off of work to commit to ABA in which most parents in the know feel hasn’t produced satisfactory results compared to IBI.

Autism Ontario in its press release seemed very supportive of the new changes. Marg Spoelstra, Executive Director, Autism Ontario stated:

Families today can give credit to the parents who have been continually advocating on behalf of the thousands of people with autism and their families for many years about the importance of investment into timely, early, evidence based intervention, even at a time when they and their children were or would not be eligible for the intervention services announced today.

One quick look at the comments section on the Autism Ontario facebook page suggests something completely different with respect to parents concerns on this policy. One parent stated:

The transition period might feel devastating. How about every phone call. Every meltdown. Every injury to not only our children by themselves, but to other family members. Every therapy strategy implemented, while waiting. Every tear. Every day, from wake, to sleep … If we’re lucky, while waiting for the already promised hope of IBI. The faith that one day … It’s all been a devastating disappointment.

Other comments include criticizing Autism Ontario for their support of this policy:

Beyond disappointed in Autism Ontario in being part of a process that offers up to 2,000 sacrificial lambs in order to support this ‘new’ program. Why is it ok to abandon these kids before they were given a chance? Why wasn’t a plan made for these kids & why couldn’t the plan have given them the same chance that kids before them got & kids after them will get (at an earlier age) ABA services are NOT as effective & in fact are very hard to access for single parents or 2 working parents.

One comment that has stuck with me being a parent with an autistic son, and political blogger:

Two words. Human Rights. This a step backwards, now we have an age five cut off, once upon a time Ontario agreed and removed the age six cut off for IBI. Huge gains can be made by children over five, especially children who are non-speaking. Developmental gains are slower for children with a developmental disability, too bad they are being written off for a chance at appropriate early intervention. Being dumped into a waitlist for ABA services that are inadequate and do little to provide the extent of intervention that children need. All of this to be delivered by bloated transfer payment agencies, instead of direct funding to families to purchase services at a much lower cost.(it’s been proven in multiple reports) I hope that parents will find the strength to come forward to speak out about what is really going on here.

Upset parents have already stated a petition to get the Ontario government to reconsider this policy approach. I’ve reached out to Autism Ontario to get them to clarify their support for this new policy the government has put forth.

More to come soon. Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog for more details as they become available. You can subscribe by e-mail through the subscribe section on the upper right hand section of this blog. You can also add me to twitter. I’m @jkobopoli.